Primoris Altus
by shira syndrome
Summary: They each have their secrets, and Nigredo's is one of smothered longing. Where Albedo holds on, he lets go, and where neither of them can have the one they want, they find chaos in each other.


Disclaimer: Do not own, stfu.

30 kisses theme 11 - _gardenia_

a/n: It has been a _very_ long time since I've even thought about Xenosaga fandom (wah, I feel like I've grown out of an era), but I absolutely refuse to give up my claim on Albedo/Rubedo without giving it a good go. I'll probably never do it again, so I'd like to try and explore every theme with these boys. So forgive me for bending canon over my knee with this one, because I did. It's never explicitly stated how long a time there were between U.R.T.V. births, or at what "age" they're born. For this, it's all literary fodder, not factual at all. XP

For your learning pleasure, a gardenia can have many different meanings, depending on who you ask and where you're looking. Some include _sweet love_ or _secret love_. Yellow is also a color associated with jealousy. And the quotation within the fic? Rabbi Julius Gordon.

* * *

**Primoris Altus**

"_He follows his father with unequal steps._" - Virgil

* * *

It's not hard to imagine what others think in regards to them. On the surface, they are U.R.T.V.s, biological weapons designed as part of the Salvator faction to combat and neutralize U-DO.

Deeper, and they are people: Jr., Gaignun, Albedo. Albedo with his deep, maddening envy, and they with their late nights on the beach of the Durandal and their small empire. The lamentable brotherhood that their close friends have witnessed broken and re-broken time and again.

Deeper still, and there are secrets kept from even each other. It's impossible not to notice, the way two halves of a whole can't seem to fit together, jarring the other with unvoiced words and actions. That is why Gaignun has become Jr.'s mainstay, the sole variable that won't change or blindside him with some other startling revelation.

And that is why Gaignun has held his tongue all the years and will continue to do so. 

Albedo comes on too hard and too strong with his own emotions, and Nigredo couldn't bear to do the same, chooses instead to keep it inside himself for the sake of another, a concept Albedo could never really grasp.

So Jr. will never know that when they are talking about the Foundation, or the Elsa, or Mary and Shelley, he is a million miles away, thinking on another time and place, the sanctuary in the mind where they were still innocent of the world and had not yet turned away from the many outcomes their lives could have taken. He doesn't need to know that the only thing to keep him sane during those long ago years was being near the one whom he would have to choose to let live or kill; although his choice differed to Albedo's, the fact that that they are so much more alike than any realize still haunts (_or maybe comforts) _him.

Gaignun remembers that day - that handful of years, really, the ones where he learned to silence his heart - because it is the clearest thing in his water color memory, and it will probably be the last thing he ever thinks about before he dies.

The Institute was awash in butter yellow sunlight that day. 

* * *

Upon his awakening, Nigredo spent an hour in his father's office being briefed on the 'situation', as though his very existence was the latest mission, which, in retrospect, it probably was. His voice was very low and even; even with his senses alight with all the new stimuli, Nigredo understood that his father had given this address many times, and with him it ended, the 669th unit, with a warning of the Red Dragon and a reminder of his purpose.

He nodded at the right places, and Yuriev eventually touched his shoulder and led him to the courtyard entrance, "Where your brothers are somewhere waiting for you," he said.

Nigredo stood staring at the artificial flowers by his foot before he thought to ask where he should go, but when he looked behind him there was no one there anymore. He turned back. A breeze was making the garden dance, and he watched a leaf fall from its branch and tumble around the flower bed.

Finally, he worked up the courage to lurch down the steps, his boots making a heavy _thud-thud-thud_ noise.

He got to the bottom and stopped, staring. The courtyard on this side of the building was painfully small with a footpath that worked its way through the trees, set around the tiled promenade. It took less than a minute to traverse, and no one liked playing there - 

- and indeed, only moments away from this initial meeting that would put another spin on all three of their nine-year-old lives, Rubedo and Albedo were reclined in the furthest corner, a determined attempt for seclusion in the shade.

"How long is this going to take?" Albedo complained, absently dragging his fingertips through the dirt.

"C'mon, aren't you even a little excited? He's a Variant too. We'll have lots of fun together."

Albedo's eyes turned to slits at that -

- and after a few more long moments, when Nigredo wandered into the trees and was almost upon them, he unexpectedly caught such a mental backlash of Albedo's scorn that he reeled back, horribly afraid that this mad-violet presence was the link master he had been told of.

_Red Dragon._

A twig snapped and twisted under him, and he lost his balance, holding his head against the new phenomena.

"Hey!" came a voice, and Nigredo jumped, tried to stumble forward onto his feet, and ended up smashing face-first into a body who had been running at him. "Ow!" came the voice again, and after that, laughter.

Nigredo saw, through the eye he was not clutching in pain, his own face set into another's - red hair, and one blue eye, a hand covering the same side of his head.

"Hey," the boy said once more, grinning. "I'm Rubedo. Nice headbutt, you really caught me off guard."

_Red Dragon?_

He blinked. He didn't recognize his own voice when he said, "I'm sorry. It was an accident. I am unit 669." He gingerly removed his hand, squinting both eyes.

The other - Rubedo - gestured behind him, smiling. A person, Nigredo saw, lingering sourly in the other's shadow. This one shot him a nasty look where Rubedo couldn't see it. "That's Albedo. He's my brother. Well, you're my brother, so I guess you guys are brothers too. We've been waiting for you. Hm... let me think - we're going to have to come up with a name for you too."

_Yes. I see. Albedo, 667, and Red Dragon, 666. This is the one I have to -_

Nigredo was torn out of his thoughts as Rubedo grabbed his wrist, yanking him along at a run. "C'mon! Let's go play together before we get called in!" Albedo raced ahead of him, and when Rubedo released his hold, he fell back a little, a little stunned at the sudden cacophony.

"C'mon!" Rubedo hollered again.

Nigredo touched his brow lightly when a red force nudged his mind, playful. 

"O-okay. Wait for me!" 

* * *

The next day he hesitated again before going down the stairs. The next day a worker watching him muttered, "Poor integration," and the day after that, Rubedo and Albedo watched him from the bottom, one angry and impatient and the other smiling, and the day after that, he didn't get a chance to draw himself together before Rubedo threw an arm around his shoulders and dragged him down at a stumbling, laughing gallop. 

They christened him Nigredo. With it, he became a member of their duo, then a trio. He is the death of something old. 

* * *

It never fails to amaze him how quickly Rubedo is able to forge bonds. It is almost something hot, like a fire, something about Rubedo's personality that blinds and diffuses them with its fervour. It is like the ancient art of metallurgy; if not for Rubedo warming them, fusing them together in the time between, he and Albedo could not (_would not_) fit. 

But in the heat of his presence, he and Albedo are bonded together, and once cool, they are pieces of metal soldered at a joint and unable to separate entirely, even if they should wish it. They are stuck together, muddling their raisons d'être until they are almost synchronous. Perhaps even without them noticing. 

* * *

They grew into their first decade of life in a succession of warm-hearted days, and the only time Nigredo recalled anything about 'Red Dragon' was when he looked at his father, but even that passed, because the three of them were inseparable like they'd never been apart, and Rubedo couldn't possibly be anything so dangerous.

'Brother' was still an odd taste on the tongue, and so it was more like they knit into mismatched _nakama_, like vines slowly tending around the trelliswork they are tied to by the patient gardener. They became so close - their own little confederacy of misfits - that they began to see the cracks in each other, or rather, see and pretend not to, a game Nigredo hadn't realized they were playing.

Like the fact that Albedo was obviously a little madsick somewhere in his head, a little twisted and cracked in places he should be straight and smooth. However, Nigredo began to fear that what he saw didn't exist at all, for no one else paid any mind at all, and his analysis flitted in and out of being like a ghostly spectre between good days and bad, where Albedo smiled and was gloriously innocent. 

But it was there, he knew. A shadow lurking in violet eyes. He considered talking with Rubedo, their leader, the one who should have been watching for these abnormalities.

Rubedo and Albedo were blood, and they both acknowledged that bond, he knew. Rubedo would give his twin a grin, a secret wink, and Albedo's mouth would soften, his eyes would warm.

Nigredo was too afraid to say anything (_it's not my place to step in between them, that bond_), and so it sat like a stone in the back of his mouth, the first of many. And with time it became just another facet of their offbeat little world. 

* * *

There were times, though, when Albedo would suddenly look at him, _look_ at him, with that same cagey expression he had had when they first met, like Nigredo was some kind of threat bearing down on him. It would almost always end with Albedo clutching tight to his twin, and would cut Nigredo off from his mental link with a cold silence that would last for an indefinite amount of time.

It scared him, those moments, because he could hear the word _Executioner_ echoing in his head despite the word not being his own.

Albedo saw something, and when it appeared - that distrustful animosity - it never failed to wipe Nigredo's smile away. 

* * *

Rubedo always brought it back, though, slight as it was.

When they weren't training, they did things all boys did: mischief, and games, and roughhousing in the grass. One time he accidentally wedged his forearm against the area just under Rubedo's navel during one of these play-fights, sending him into a red-faced fit of squawking. 

He never said it, but he began to understand Albedo's dangerous obsession a little better. 

It was impossible to escape, being a cold little planet caught in the orbit of the sun. 

* * *

Nigredo developed his love of reading from Rubedo, who would always be the most avid devourer of the written word. He had been so glad when Rubedo mentioned it offhand, a odd sort of relief, because he knew it bored Albedo senseless.

They had started with poetry. Rubedo always brought the texts, whatever they were, but the time they were finally alone together, doing something of interest together, Rubedo had brought an actual book - an actual _book_- with him, hidden under a tarp in the vast space of the warehouse as they were.

Albedo was looking for them, Nigredo knew, but Rubedo was always pulling some sort of mischievous trick on somebody, and put his finger to his lips in his laughter. Nigredo understood; they gently quieted their minds, and boy, if there wasn't a furious violet explosion along the link, tinged a bitter yellow color that Nigredo could almost taste on his tongue.

But Rubedo flipped the cover open, and Nigredo forgot about it when Rubedo taught him all about the things they'd never see outside the Institute: places and people, subjects and seasons.

Flowers had been Nigredo's favorite topic, and that's why he took up a special project, disappearing into different parts of the gardens without explanation. 

* * *

Those looks again, those violet pools full of unspoken hostility. Jealousy is a horrible thing. 

* * *

They were eleven, _and if only Rubedo knew the truth_, thought himself and Albedo both.

Rubedo didn't, of course, and he made it quite clear he didn't understand why he and Albedo grew more and more bellicose as time wore on.

_It's complicated_, Nigredo wanted to say, but his throat would always close.

"It's nothing," Albedo would say, because he had been playing the farce for such a long time, lying came naturally.

Those violet eyes turned on him, viciously dark, warning. Nigredo nodded at Rubedo's cocked eyebrow, unable to speak. Then the link master threw an arm around Nigredo's shoulders - _too, too close_ - and he couldn't help but breathe in the scent of a body, not his, and it made his insides jump pleasantly. 

He shivered. He wasn't like Albedo. He couldn't play a charade simply over a fear of rejection.

(_Rejection? Rejection of what, exactly?_)

And that was always the question.

Nigredo knew he had to tell Rubedo. Tell him something. A truth. A lie. Something.

* * *

_"Love is not blind - it sees more, not less;But because it sees more it chooses to see less."_

And that is certainly a truth amongst truths, Nigredo thought, turning a page. 

* * *

In the end, he was too much of a coward. He placed a single white gardenia on Rubedo's pillow while no one was watching and fled. 

Rubedo would know what it meant. He had taught him that. 

* * *

It was a wonder how hope could choke a person, but it could. Nigredo hid in the outdoor amphitheatre, huddled under the cool confines of a tier, knees drawn up. He had made a mistake, he knew. The more he wished it wasn't so, the more reality crept up to sit around his shoulders. One should not expect love from a source that cannot give it. At least not that kind of love.

Being too hopeful was just as detrimental as not being hopeful enough, and if it were possible to sum them up so, it would be the defining irony of his and Albedo's lives.

And that's exactly how Albedo found him, when he came stalking down the stairs, idly waving a white gardenia under his nose.

Nigredo slid out from his crouched position, smothering a weak mewl at the sight. He backed against the center platform, grinding his back against the edge. _This_, this here was not a confrontation he wanted to have.

"_Don't come here_," he said as loudly and clearly as he could. He sharpened the intention into a fine point, catapulting it down the link at the other with all the resolve he could muster. 

Although he couldn't see Albedo's expression, Nigredo saw when it struck him, frozen in mid-motion, half-way down the amphitheatre. There was a pause, then Albedo's mind struck out at him like a wild thing, fighting the mesmerism with an alarming amount of force.

Nigredo pressed himself further backwards, bumping the backs of his knees. He had never tried to control another variant, so different from the unified mind of a standard... it was so hard to find a crack in Albedo's consciousness...

They grappled like that, thirty feet apart, until Nigredo finally lost his grasp.

He yelped and tried to run, but Albedo covered the remaining distance in a heartbeat; hands slammed down onto his shoulders, and he was shoved onto platform with Albedo's body landing full on him - 

- but he was _angry_, he had been trained for physical combat as well as mental, and he dug his knee into Albedo's gut, then his foot, kicking himself off to end up in a crouch. He screwed his eyes shut. Albedo still had the flower clenched in his hand. The petals were tingeing yellow. "_Go away!_" he screamed, but his concentration was shot.

The next time Albedo grabbed his shoulders, he did not resist, and Albedo's fingertips dub into his flesh while he ground Nigredo's shoulder blades into the surface. He couldn't bear to open his eyes, to look into the pale moon face that mirrored his, the inky black sky. Especially not when a damp puff of breath touched his jawline. "What's wrong, Nigredo? You don't look happy. Did you give up on your mission? Did you give up on it yet?" Nigredo was suddenly pull up, and slammed back down; his gasp of pain was choked. "You two and your stupid secrets and your reading! I've always hated you, Nigredo! I should just tell him all about you! I won't let you have him - he was mine first! Not yours."

Albedo was built of sudden whims, and Nigredo could see the kiss coming before it happened. Still, Nigredo only squirmed minutely, the corners of his eyes pricking. 

It was tender and yet still firm, like a controlled smoulder just waiting to explode into passion - and it was _so sick_ how they had both dreamed of such similar details, _sick_ how realistic it felt even coming from the wrong person, _sick_ how Albedo knew exactly what he wanted - and Nigredo felt the harsh sobs building in his chest, he was so ashamed.

But it didn't stop him from kissing back, nor caressing his fingertips along the other's abdomen -

- Albedo jerked, ticklish.

Then he did cry, and it didn't even slow Albedo down. His lips continued to move, hot, clumsy, and he could eventually taste his own salty misery on them. Nigredo didn't care. 

* * *

The Executioner existed in the hidden folds of his mind, and that is the same place where he would have to place parts of himself, never to be revisited. 

It was sundown, and Nigredo went straight to the showers where there were only three standards clustered together in the entire facility. It wasn't a training day, for which he was glad. Nothing but the sound of water dripping and the spray of a scant few shower heads falling faint at his back as he marched past the hundreds of stalls to the very end.

Mind closed. Eyes closed. Hands curled to his naked skin. Breath sliding sharp and jagged through clenched teeth, drowned by hissing water. 

No one would find him. No one _could_ find him, or without a doubt he would crack like glass. He pressed his cheek to the wall, and drifted.

And then came the long moment of pleasantly unmindful existence, quickly curdled by the wet slap of feet, the swish of the curtain as it was pulled open and closed once again.

"Crap, couldn't you've picked one farther up?" Albedo complained. "It's cold down here."

If he were able, if he were to ask, there would be no words. But Nigredo thought if he listened very closely, he could hear himself breaking up under the weight of Albedo's presence.

"Don't look _too_ lively or anything," Albedo continued, a mix of kind and cruel, nigh unreadable.

_Average showers are only built for one,_ came Nigredo's thoughts. _We're not supposed to shower together. Standard units shower together sometimes, only sometimes, because they are one entity. We're two entities and we shouldn't be showering together. Go away, Albedo, go away._

The link remained closed, and Albedo's hand, soft like a half-remembered ghost, pressed to the skin between his shoulder blades. 

_Why? Why? What are you thinking right now? What is your truth right now?_

There came a bright prick of pain in his belly, the heavy stroke of turmoil. He was unthawing, becoming animated with his hysteria again, and he whirled on the other, eyes skittering back and forth and needing to scream so badly it choked him. (Just another stone.)

Naked, drawn like a grey shroud with his doused hair and ashen skin, Albedo stared back. Inscrutable again, those vague purple eyes.

"Oh little baby, why do you look so _miserable_?" Spoken like a curse. Nigredo flinched at the sudden, harsh lash of Albedo's tone. 

And then the other turned on his heel and strode out, scaring him and the lingering handful of standards alike with his maelstrom of prickly red irritation, and mental _What are you looking at!?_

Nigredo sighed, sniffled, trembled. The water had long gone cold.

This - everything - was all so very wrong. 

* * *

It all occurs on the eve of their twelve year, and Albedo sticks him with a jagged-glass silence that lasts for days, dead and wintry. Rubedo is used to these unexplained spats, and writes it off as another petty argument, having never seen the gardenia, or the glint in Albedo's violet eyes as water smoothed soft white hair to his face. Albedo, for his part, does not do as Nigredo fears and try to spite him - for whatever reasons Albedo has - by recounting events in the mercilessly naive way of his. In fact, he says nothing at all, and bit by bit, it's like watching a secret between them sink slowly into the earth, to be buried and forgotten.

The twelfth year is a bittersweet year. A horrible year, a wonderful year, an exceptional span of time that the present Nigredo sometimes wishes had gone a different way, starting with the non-appearance of a girl named Sakura. But she does appear, and they do fall apart, and the blood surfaces on his hands along with the smoking gun, and Albedo curses him to death, and Rubedo is his alone in the end, although not in the way he once wanted. 

Nigredo can let ago, unlike his madcap brother, and he does. After tragedy, he watches Rubedo grow in mind if not in body, and thinks all three of them cannot hold on to each other forever. Nigredo can let go, unlike Albedo. Nigredo has to let go, because Albedo could never.

And he does. 

* * *

The Institute was awash in butter yellow sunlight that day.


End file.
